Reply #1: Good info, but misleadingly optimistic. [View All]

[Ready4Change]

It implies that you can replace a solar PV panel with a hair thin tip of fiber optic cable. Bull hockey.

The sun only delivers so much potential energy per square inch. And granted, solar PV panels aren't terribly efficient. Even the best only convert about 20% of the available light into electricity. Still, if this new tech somehow magically converted 100% of the energy to electricity, you'd still need to expose enough fiber optic cable ends to equal 1/5th the surface area of todays best PV panels to get the same power delivery.

Further, the article states that thus far in experiments they've only achieved 3% efficiency, and hope to get 8%. Their prediction is LESS efficient than existing CHEAP PV panels. In other words, you'd need to expose ends of fiber optic cables totalling MORE surface area than existing solar panels, rather than less.

This articles claims don't match up with it's own facts. That might be bad reporting. Because I can imagine how this is supposed to provide advantages. But, based on the info in the article, I'm not convinced that it's showing potential.